John of the Mountains

by Linnie Marsh Wolfe

(
from the book's dust jacket
)

John of the Mountains
by Linnie Marsh Wolfe
1979
University of Wisconsin Press,
Madison
(reprinted by arrangement with Houghton Mifflin Co.)

John Muir, America's pioneer conservationist and
father of the national park system, was a man of
considerable literary talent. As he explored the
wilderness of the western part of the United States for
decades, he carried notebooks with him, narrating his
wanderings, describing what he saw, and recording his
scientific researches. This reprint of his journals,
edited by Linnie Marsh Wolfe in 1938 and long out of
print, offers an intimate picture of Muir and his
activities during a long and productive period of his life.

The sixty extant journals and numerous notes in this
volume were written from 1867 to 1911. They start
seven years after the time covered in
The Story of My Boyhood and Youth
(Wisconsin, 1965), Muir's
uncompleted autobiography. The earlier journals capture
the essence of the Sierra Nevada and Alaska landscapes.
The changing appearance of the Sierras from Sequoia
north and beyond the Yosemite enthralled Muir, and the
first four years of the journals reveal his dominating
concern with glacial action. The later notebooks reflect
his changes over the years, showing a mellowing of
spirit and deep concern for human rights.

Muir apparently took several notebooks with him on
his longer trips, tying one to his belt and entering his
observations wherever he happened to open a page. Many
were scribbled by flickering campfires or in the dark lee
of some boulder or tree while a storm raged. Since they
were written in pencil and often undated, the notes were
hard to read and could be arranged only in an approximate
chronological order. The flowers and ferns pressed
between the pages smudged the writing even further.

Most of the books were unrevised by Muir and do not
represent his final judgment about plant names. Many
place names are not to be found on maps, for he frequently
gave his own names to the features of the landscapes he
described.

Like all his writings, the journals concentrate on his
observations in the wilderness. His devotion to his
family, his many warm friendships, and his many-sided
public life are hardly mentioned. Very little is said
about the quarter-century battle for national parks and
forest reserves. The notebooks record, in language fuller
and freer than his more formal writings, the depth of his
love and transcendental feeling for the wilderness. The
rich heritage of his native Scotland and the unconscious
music of the poetry of Burns, Milton, and the King James
Bible
permeate the language of his poetic fancy.

In his later life, Muir attempted to sort out these
journals and, at the request of friends, published a few
extracts. A year after his death in 1914, his literary
executor and biographer, William Frederick Badè, also
published episodes from the journals. Linnie Marsh Wolfe
set out to salvage the best of his writings still left
unpublished in 1938 and has thus added to our
understanding of the life and thought of a complex and
fascinating American figure.